On reading library & electronic books

Ken Hemingway

Anyone who writes in or marks books is the spawn of the devil and destined to burn in hell for all eternity.

Loricat

Hmm...

Me?
No notes in books, not since university. Not since reading Woody Allen's short story "The Whore of Mensa": "She was every dame you saw waiting in line at the Elgin or the Thalia, or penciling the words 'Yes, very true' in the margin of some book on Kant."

On (gasp!) getting rid of books: I sometimes sell them to bookstores...stores here that pay cash (instead of store credit) usually pay 50% of what they can sell them for. Or, there's always Bookcrossing.

Lori

"All beings are the owners of their deeds, the heirs to their deeds."

MadArchitect

Agh! The bane of my existence is buying used books of checking books out of the library to find them filled with trite marginal notation. If you must write in the margins of your book, please, for the benefit of anyone else who might attempt to read that copy, refrain from writing things like "yes, very true". What's the point? Are you going to forget that it's true the next time you read that passage? Make it interesting; throw in some bold conjectures.

For that matter, be judicious with highlighting and underlining. I recently read a copy of Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" in which some previous owner had underlined, no lie, 90% of the text. They may very well have been on mescaline at the time.


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